by B.J. Tolentino

Created on: September 15, 2010

Facebook Insights is a free application which enables page owners and developers (specifically page administrators, application developers and domain administrators) to view comprehensive metrics of their promotional campaigns in Facebook. It is Facebook's way of taking web analytics to the next level.

Facebook Insights, which was then about getting data from fan pages and social ads, stepped up (together with the launch of Facebook's new Open Graph API) by allowing users to access data from people who share content from monitored sites. It doesn't matter where those shares originate from.

There are a wide range of useful data which can be tracked down using Facebook Insights. They basically fall into two categories: User Insight and Interaction Insights. Promotions differ in goals and so does the metrics needed to analyze results. Whether you're into Facebook to expand brand awareness, generate marketing leads, or to to directly sell your products and services, Facebook Insights enables you to take a glimpse (data is aggregated and made available within 24 hours after the full day is complete) on your progress.

As a standard feature of most analytical tools, Facebook Insight allows the viewing of geographic and demographic data of fans. Location is not just a by-word anymore, it is an essential part of web marketing. Through Insignt, you will know where your fans and hits are coming from (not personally identifiable though) through their IP addresses. You can make adjustments in terms of which engagement and content strategy to employ.

There are many more useful metrics you can access through Facebook Insights. If you want to anylyze where you are in terms of effectiveness of your engagement (interaction insight), you will be able to track down things like post likes (or unlikes and attrition rates), post comments and post impressions. You will also be able to track down on mentions, the amount of discussions, reviews, all sorts of wall posts including video posts.

As far as user insight in concern, Facebook Insight gives you the important metrics like number of fans (monthly fan size growth - "like" and "unlikes"), page views (and unique page views), tab views, external referrers and many more.

As they say, social media tools still lack the ability to effectively manage social media marketing campaigns. This can also be said on SEO analytical tools such as Google Analytics and Facebook Insights' counterpart in Google Insight. It can be time consuming as some of these metrics require constant monitoring (manual tracking and analysis). However, Facebook Insights is a step in the right direction - an important tool especially for businesses using Facebook's display advertising platform.      

To see the metrics of your Facebook page or Platform application, you can proceed to your Insight Dashboard.

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